


Meanwhile

by th_esaurus



Category: Tintin - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:36:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23806483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: He was such a wildly clumsy man, Tintin thought with great fondness, and yet so firm and reliable when it was needed of him.
Relationships: Archibald Haddock/Tintin
Comments: 59
Kudos: 221
Collections: The Fanfic Book Club





	Meanwhile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crowsthat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowsthat/gifts).

The trip was the Captain’s idea - “A real holiday this time, now, I mean it!” he’d griped. “None of this getting caught up in adventures - I’ll be allergic to adventures before much longer!” - but the flight was purely Tintin’s fancy. He’d not long ago acquired his light aircraft license, somewhat awkwardly after the fact, and secured them a lovely little Cessna C-34 for the clear flight to the Bodensee. The morning air was crisp and cold, dawn rising as the engine chuntered into life, a sound not entirely unlike the Captain’s low rumbling complaints.

“We’re only going a few days. Might’ve got a train.”

“Nonsense, Captain,” Tintin said brightly. “You don’t trust me to pilot us?”

“Aye, I trust _you_,” he retorted, with a sidelong glance at the old plane. Milou, always a reliable barometer, chirped excitedly at Tintin’s feet, and the Captain groaned, his fate sealed. “Fools, all of us.”

*

It was a beautiful flight.

They landed on the cusp of the lake not long after midday, Bodensee’s air traffic guiding them in with that laid back seriousness that Tintin so enjoyed about southern Germany. There was a sweetness to the countryside as though sugar and cocoa from across the Swiss border had settled into the clouds; wry, kind smiles on everyone’s lips, saccharine blown in on the lakeside breeze. 

Tintin was delighted at the Captain’s newly buoyant mood. “Smooth landing, my lad, what an excellent smooth landing—you’ve come a long way since Morocco!”

“I’ll remind you that we were being shot at in Morocco, Captain.”

“And there’ll be none of that excitement here,” he barked, hefting his bags with the determination of a man whose only priorities were a poolside nap or a fireside beer. 

In truth, Tintin rather hoped the trip would be uneventful too. Not that he could resist a lead when it fell across his path like a blown feather; but perhaps he would not keep his eyes quite as keenly open for curious anomalies. He had spent the past two weeks hunkered in his Brussels Ville apartment, trying to focus on a long-overdue article but finding distraction in the simplest things: every time he sat down to type, it seemed Milou needed to be walked, or the post had arrived and must be checked, or the sun was glinting through his study window at just the right angle to make him squint. The Captain telephoned him from Moulinsart every afternoon to complain about his bridge companions, a melody he’d heard on the radio that he abhorred, how tricksy it was to get good, fresh mussels this far out from the city or shore. 

“You’ve become a housepet, Captain,” Tintin often chuckled, and only laughed more fondly at the Captain’s great offence. 

In all respects it should have been far easier to get work done away from Moulinsart - his poor apartment had grown flabby with neglect, and he’d spent the first evening back shame-faced and dusting down sideboards. It was too easy at that grand old house to spend the days at leisure, strolling the grounds with Milou and the Captain and his handsome cane, poking around the kitchens to steal bites of whatever the cook was whipping up for the evening, playing chess and backgammon and vingt-et-un against the Captain while they bet with buttons and bottle caps, or browsing the great library that the Captain had stocked to his credit. Huge tomes detailing naval skirmishes, military history, geography, far flung politics, fiction ranging from the high brow to the bawdy, and his two indulgent pride-and-joys - a first edition copy of Moby Dick, and a beautiful collection of prints from an English painter of the sea by the name of Turner. Sometimes Tintin would pluck a book from the shelves and curl up with it in the wing chair, and not realise that the whole day had passed until the Captain found him late in the evening, telling him with fond exasperation that he’d clean missed dinner. 

All of which is to say, Tintin enjoyed being at Moulinsart far too much to be productive. The Captain had even asked him to stay long-term, no end date, but he had regretfully declined, despite the draw of it. He had thought the change of scenery would have him hit his rapidly approaching deadline with ease. But he found himself idling, procrastinating the whole day through until he could settle in with a cup of black tea and the Captain in his ear, recounting his equally lazy day. 

It felt rather disingenuous of Tintin to telephone his editor to ask for an extension, and the very next week jaunt off to Germany. But it was not hugely difficult to convince himself that it was merely a long weekend to bring his compass back to true north: a gulp of water to quench a thirst he had not realised he was suffering. “Shall we have a little vacances?” the Captain had mused down the phone to him one afternoon, and Tintin at once had said, “Yes—!” so fast it was almost a gasp.

Nestor had arranged a cab to take them to Lindau, and a pair of rooms at the Bad Schachen, a grand old house on the cusp of the water. With a somewhat frustrating immediacy, the Captain went to scope out the hotel’s bar, while Tintin checked them in. The lobby was not at all unlike Moulinsart, though a little more coherently decorated, bright pastels in the noonday sun, gauzy curtains and a shining grand piano waiting patiently to help strike up the evening’s entertainment. 

The concierge coughed lightly for his attention. “Bitte entschuldigen Sie mein Herr,” he said very evenly, and explained in a low, calm voice that there had been a small error with the booking. Tintin’s German was conversational at best, and he listened, nodding, with a strained smile. Would the gentlemen accept their gracious apologies and be happy to take the Lakeview suite instead? With complimentary champagne on ice, of course.

“Perfekt,” Tintin replied, quite blithely. 

It was all in all an agreeable upgrade. The name was earnest: the suite, on the top floor of the hotel, did indeed have a spectacular panorama of the Bodensee and a quaint balcony on which to view it, as well two sweating bottles of Krug that Tintin had half a mind to sequester away before the Captain got any ideas. But his mind was elsewhere as they dropped their weekend bags on the sofa, Tintin’s hands coming to rest on his hips and the Captain letting out a pleased clap and rubbing his palms together.

“Coffee!” he declared. “And I fancy indulging in some of those little cream puffs we saw on the drive in, don’t you?”

Tintin could not find it in himself to disagree one bit.

*

It was truly a blissful sort of afternoon. They strolled the cobbled Maximilianstrasse, seeming to drift from cafe to cafe. The Captain supped his coffee with deep satisfaction, idly dragging his finger through the pastry cream and holding a scoop of the stuff down by his side for Milou to lap. Tintin chided them both for it, but not with any particular bite. The wide alley was stuffed to the brim with the kind of higgledy-piggledy antiques that fascinated Tintin, a story surely hiding within every object. Vintage coats and leather-patched hunting gear hung alongside pre-war curios, postcards and fliers from Berlin’s decadent old clubs, oil paintings of the lake, the imposing lighthouse, the wistful mountains. Every corner they turned showed off a new row of giddy houses, every street like Mondrian blocks of straight, bright colour. The Captain’s excitement at finding a facade the exact sky blue of Tintin’s jumper was catching, and Tintin posed patiently while the Captain fiddled with his camera, struggling even to remove the lens cap, let alone take a photograph. 

He was such a wildly clumsy man, Tintin thought with great fondness, and yet so firm and reliable when it was needed of him.

A sweet little hatmaker’s caught his eye and he threaded his arm through the Captain’s elbow to drag him across the street. Tintin got a boyish thrill from dressing up - not so much to blend in with the locals as to pretend, for a moment, that he might be one of them - and he tried on a string of Alpine felt hats, each making the Captain guffaw more than the last. “Hold still, hold still,” he insisted, and snapped another photo. Tintin felt he must be beaming.

“One of you both?” the milliner offered in easy French, and Tintin at once unlooped the camera from the Captain’s neck. 

“Oh, please,” he begged, delighted. He had so few photos of the Captain - he bristled at the idea, and always said the great old portrait of Sir Francis in his drawing room looked so damn much like him he may as well have sat for it himself - he refused to let the Captain humbug this opportunity. 

The milliner peered through the viewfinder, and then gestured for them to press in closer. “Stand a little closer to your father, if you would?” 

Tintin let out a peal of laughter. What a charming story this was, in the middle of a charming day. “My friend, sir, not my father—!” He quit his laughter abruptly though. The Captain had seemed to brace up beside him, a sudden tension in his arm and shoulder as Tintin leaned against him. He let his hand rest on the small of the Captain’s back. That too was tense.

His grumbled thanks to the milliner was less than enthused, and Tintin brought a hat out of his own pocket in apology and gratitude. 

*

“And am I allowed a beer or two?” The Captain’s gaze had roved across to a fine-looking inn, patrons settling in as the sun settled down.

“_One _beer, yes, I’m sure.”

“_Terribly _ generous of you.” Tintin nudged him for his impudence, but— even if the Captain ended the evening much too far in his cups, he didn’t think he would mind. He was simply happy, the same gentle satisfaction that often washed over him during a long, drawn out evening at Moulinsart: comfortable silence, a warm fire, Milou dozing on top of his feet, and the familiar sound of the Captain puffing steadily at his pipe.

They might have been in the mountains here. The windows were frosted and the interior all dark wood, antlers and taxidermy, but not austere, not at all. The place was lousy with noise and smells, locals chuntering and bartering good-naturedly, tuneful clangs and yelling from the kitchen, a barmaid bustling about with bowls of hot stew, vast plates of sausage and three tankards of beer in each hand at a time. The table beside them was deep into a contentious-sounding game of Tarock, and the Captain wheedled the use of their spare deck of cards so he and Tintin could waste the night playing gin rummy and - one of them, at least - getting increasingly sozzled. Tintin could not bring himself to be angry, just as he suspected. He was merely desperately pleased to be here with his closest companion in all the world.

*

The wobbling walk back to the hotel was uneventful, even if the Captain did threaten the cobblestones with a bout of fisticuffs for tripping him up more than once. Tintin was forced to hush him, despite the bell-like ringing of his own laughter in the alleyways, and stopped him just outside the hotel lobby to flatten the Captain’s roguish hair and straighten his collar. 

“Am I presentable?” the Captain joshed, standing to attention.

“Very handsome,” Tintin said, patting his chest. 

He could not help but laugh again, ruining their illusion of sobriety, at the Captain doffing an invisible cap to everyone they passed in the lobby. “Evening,” he kept saying loudly, not even attempting German. “Fine evening, good sir—”

He set to the fetching and carrying when they reached the suite: water for the Captain as first port of call, and then unzipping his bag and hunting for his toiletries. He accidentally pulled out his pistol case at first - adventures may have been off the schedule, but the adventures themselves didn’t necessarily know that - chuckled, and managed to find his toothbrush. 

The Captain was standing holding his untouched glass of water in his hand. He looked, the crinkle of a frown on his face, somewhat dumbstruck.

“Captain?”

He opened his mouth, closed it. Lifted a finger, put it down. Then he tried again. “Tintin, lad— Where’s the other bed?”

Tintin blinked at him.

“...Oh. Oh. They— the concierge told me they had to move us. I didn’t quite— Oh, I didn’t realise.”

He had already unpacked half of his bag across the duvet, as though staking an unconscious claim. 

“No matter,” the Captain said, puffing out his chest. “No matter, I’ll take the sofa.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. With your complaints about your back?” Here, the noble thing would have been for Tintin to offer himself for the sofa, which in truth looked perfectly comfortable, if a little short. He fully intended to do this. It really was what he intended to say. “The bed is plenty large enough for us both.”

He was suddenly very conscious of the air in the room. How quiet it was when neither of them were talking or, apparently, breathing, and for a long second Tintin felt almost nauseous. A strange bubbling in the pit of his stomach, thinking he’d suggested something so ridiculous the Captain would simply let out an offended bark of laughter and banish him to the lounge. And yet— why should this be an overstepped boundary? They had slept together under the same roof time and time again, at the chateau, motels, tents, once a yurt, and more than once under nothing but the canopy of the night sky. They had huddled for warmth on the sloping ice high above Tibet with nothing more than their sleeping bags between them. Was this so different?

Tintin swallowed. Of course it was. Lakeside Bavaria was hardly lurking with mortal danger. 

Strangely, he felt adamant he did not want it to make a jot of difference. 

“...Aye, I suppose there’s room enough,” the Captain said carefully, scratching the back of his neck. “If you’re sure.”

“Quite sure.” Tintin smiled.

*

It was far too warm for pyjamas. But Tintin felt he should, nonetheless.

They laid down to sleep back to back, of course. The best way to keep a healthy distance. Tintin preferred to sleep on his right hand side but made no fuss. 

“Goodnight, Captain,” he said, and seemed to wait ever such a long time for the response.

“...Goodnight, my lad. Sleep well.”

*

He wasn’t sure what woke him. Perhaps simply the unfamiliarity of the environment; his first night back at his apartment after a long stretch at Moulinsart was always unsettled. He fumbled for his watch on the bedside table, squinting at it in the gauzy darkness, wanting to know whether it was worth recouping his losses and getting up for the morning. Barely past 2am. Tintin rolled back over in bed, dreadfully annoyed.

He was quite aware of what a restless sleeper the Captain could be. Had seen him knocked out and dozing enough times to know that he tossed and turned, splayed his legs, ground his teeth or let his mouth fall wide open, breathing and snortling in equal measure. So of course he had turned over in his sleep; of course his limbs had crept to Tintin’s side of the bed, his slack head almost rolling into the gap between the two pillows. None of this was a surprise. It was just, now that Tintin was facing him, there was barely a handspan between them. That was very close. Close enough to see the individual strands in his tangle of a beard, the flecks of silver in the black that caught even the lowest light. Close enough to see the depth of the dark circles under his shut eyes, a lifetime of stress and labour having long ago left their mark. Tintin could feel his even breath landing on his own lips, almost a weight to it.

He could turn. Face the wallpaper. But what use if he would just wake up again another hour later, his body unconsciously unhappy?

Tintin’s annoyance veered inwards. He was peeved at himself for fussing so, and nuzzled at the soft pillow to get comfortable. The bed was even richer than those at Moulinsart, and for all his grumbling it didn’t take long for him to feel drowsy once more.

His eyes did not want to seem to close. The Captain’s face held him like a painting. He seemed— unsettled, in a way that Tintin felt in his chest and stomach, a chill discomfort. His brow was ever so slightly furrowed, a little dimple in the thick skin above the bridge of his nose. His hands were not slack but curled into loose fists, one of them almost under the pillow and one atop the duvet. It was as though everything he raged against in his daily life haunted him still in his sleep, but this time there was no outlet to chase his demons away. No ranting and raving to protect him, no bluster to cover the startling honesty of his deep emotion. 

Sleepily, thoughtless, Tintin reached out. He placed the tip of his index finger in the centre of the Captain’s temple and let it drag all the way down to his nose, trying to smooth out the unhappy ridges there. The touch was more than gentle enough not to wake him, but the Captain made a sleeping noise in his throat and turned to bury his face in the pillow, as though shaking off a housefly landed upon him in the night. He must have felt it.

Tintin’s hand was left hovering in the air for a moment. He frowned at his own fingers, strange and dark to him at this moonlit hour. 

What a funny thing to have done, he thought, tired.

*

He must have fallen back asleep, though had no idea when. Only that it was dark when he closed his eyes, and bright with the dawn when they opened next. The bed next to him was light and empty, his palm downturned against the warm, crumpled bed-sheets.

The Captain was up and about before him - not too long before, perhaps, though he was washed and dressed, his hair finger-brushed into something resembling neatness. “Up and at ‘em, Captain,” Tintin called out sleepily.

“I’d tell you off for dozing in so late, boy, but I expect it was my own snoring kept you awake half the night.”

“No, not at all.”

The Captain seemed surprised. “You slept through, then?”

“Yes. Well, no. No, I— I must have been restless.”

The Captain’s disappointment was palpable. “Really, lad, I can take the sofa—”

“Not at all,” Tintin told him again, smiling brightly. 

*

Whatever fog had dampened him in the night had, by the end of breakfast, almost entirely lifted, and they set about packing necessities for the day: a book each, some bread rolls and cheese from the service, diced fruit that Tintin clumsily scooped into a water bottle, and his swimming trunks. Tintin optimistically took along a notebook and pen to work on his assignment, but it was all but forgotten when they reached the Bodensee, a patch of grass and sand just west of the lighthouse, almost deserted in the off-season. 

The Captain fetched them ice creams with little wooden spoons. They people-watched, the few contented tourists, much like them, dotted around the flaxen sand. Milou yapped at the gentle wash of the lake shore, bounding into the water almost immediately, calling back for Tintin to join him. He laughed, happy, took off his shoes and rolled his trousers up above his knees. 

“How’s the water, lad?” the Captain called, not looking up from his book. It was Waugh, Tintin noted, only freshly published in French, and he would have to borrow it afterwards. 

“Really it’s far too cold for swimming,” he admitted, “but I quite fancy it regardless.”

“Aye, I suspected you might,” the Captain said, producing a towel that Tintin had clean forgotten to bring. He was ever so dependable when the moment called for it.

He spent a bracing half hour doing laps back and forth between imaginary posts in the water. Milou paddled alongside him for a few minutes and then swiftly tired, bored, heading back to the shore and wending circles between the Captain’s damp ankles, planted just in the shallows of the water. Tintin stopped for a moment, panting hard, and watched the Captain, quite in his own world, puffing on his pipe and taking snaps with the camera: the lighthouse, the woods on the far shore, the sailing boats making their way out to the breakwater, and Tintin himself. He kicked hard under the water, propelling himself up to wave delightedly with both hands. 

The Captain was smiling when he put the camera down. The softest shade of smile.

“Come and join me!” Tintin shouted across, still waving.

The Captain’s smile fled at once. “Hmph,” he replied loudly, patting his belly. “Some of us don’t have the stamina for it, lad.”

“You’re in marvellous shape!” Tintin laughed, thinking of the mountains they’d climbed, the deserts they’d conquered; but to his surprise the Captain just flushed.

“You just have your own fun,” he chided, huffing, and padded back to the grassy slope of the shore to settle down for the afternoon. 

Tintin bobbed in the water a moment longer, watching. The Captain’s achingly familiar silhouette, the shape of him unmistakable through smoke or mist or fire, a hundred miles away or more. Tintin would always know him. He felt that odd burbling in his stomach again. Perhaps he was hungry. But he did not yet feel ready to go back to shore, somehow. To be in polite company again. 

*

He swam until he was exhausted. A deep, aching tiredness in his arms and thighs that satisfied him no end. It was an effort even to paddle to the shore, and he was wordlessly grateful for the towel the Captain laid out for him, the flask of water he had ready.

Tintin pulled the towel up around his shoulders, loose enough to let the sun dry his hair and chest. He was quite content to let the Captain doze or finish his book or simply lie with his hands crossed over his stomach while the sun shone the last of its afternoon warmth down on them; but he seemed fidgety. Several times he attempted to break the silence, until, all of a sudden, just a little too loud, he said, “This’d be a lovely place to come with a wife.”

Of all the things he might’ve said—! Tintin was rather taken aback. “Well. Yes? Yes, I’m sure.” They had seen other couples, certainly, promenading the stone wall that curved up around the beach, or picnicking on the sloping knoll. 

“Lady Herringbone keeps harping on about how much she fancies a jaunt around Europe. I should take her, perhaps. Not Paris, anywhere but Paris, all that fussing about opera and snails. Geneva, maybe?” He was muttering half to himself. Tintin’s eyes were so wide he could feel the skin around them stretch.

“...Delilah Herringbone? From— from your bridge club?”

“Aye.”

“...Captain, you’ve spent countless hours essaying to me how insufferable you find her.”

His flush was angrier this time, creeping up from his beard to redden his cheeks and nose. “The woman has her foibles, to be sure,” he snapped, “but don’t we all?”

A horrible urge to laugh shuddered through Tintin. He swallowed it. “Are you planning to _ court _ her, Captain?!”

“The thought’s crossed my mind.”

Tintin felt speechless. Where on earth had this outburst come from? Not once in all of his long stays at Moulinsart had the Captain taken any pleasure in entertaining a single person save for Tintin. Certainly his peers dropped by now and then, raided the Captain’s wine cellar and made bullish comments about the state of his gardens or the size of his household staff, but there was always relief when it was just the two of them again. Tintin had met Lady Herringbone exactly once, and the Captain’s only strong opinion on her visit had been annoyance that she left a smudge of ruby lipstick on her teacup.

Was— was this what he’d been doing while Tintin sat in his little house in Brussels Ville, distracting himself from writer’s block? Seducing widows who weren’t even, by all accounts, a decent hand at bridge? Is that what this trip truly was: a reconnaissance? 

“You might have asked her here in the first place instead of me,” Tintin said suddenly, blandly.

“What? That’s not—”

“I mean,” he carried on, consciously interrupting, “if you intend for her to be your wife, you should rather be spending time with her and not me, isn’t that right?”

“Blast it, my boy, I invited you because I wanted to invite _ you_.”

Tintin was angry and out of his depth with this sort of jealousy. It shocked him to even name it that, and he bit his tongue to prevent another unbecoming dig. 

The Captain studied him a moment, and then his shoulders slumped a little, apparent defeat. He pulled at a tall strand of grass awkwardly, as though unsure of what his hands were for. It seemed to Tintin the same kind of unfamiliarity with his own body that he’d felt staring at his hand last night. “It’s true I’d rather spend time with you,” he sighed. “Those old society gals - they’re so damned hard to please.”

“And I’m easy?”

“You’re being contrary on purpose.”

Tintin knew it was true, and was hurt by it anyway. Perhaps he was hurting himself. “...Why even mention her?” he asked, and it sounded whiny and petulant to his ears. He wished he could take the words back at once. 

The Captain finally pulled his blade of grass out of the ground with a little grunt of effort. He twirled it gracelessly between his forefinger and thumb for a moment. Then, sighing again, flicked it aside. “It’s been on my mind,” he said, the kind of serious he very rarely was. “That I should— get myself a wife about the house. A man of my age and standing, well, it doesn’t do to be without one.”

“You only discovered that standing a year past!”

“Aye, and a seaman’s life is never fair on a lady! But I’m a seaman no more, and there are— expectations—”

Tintin felt knotted with frustration. “You’ve never put any stock in the expectations of people you neither like nor respect, Captain.”

“You’re damn prickly today, Tintin.”

He forced himself to swallow before he spoke. He could be hot-headed and they both knew it. It was a trait he chided the Captain for but rarely kept in check himself. “Yes. I’m— I’m sorry. You took me aback is all.”

The Captain eyed him, picking up his offer of a truce. “I should have mentioned it sooner.”

“No, no. It’s your private life, after all. You needn’t share everything with me.”

And yet, he always did, Tintin thought, still frustrated. They were always so open with each other. Those damn telephone calls, wiling away the hours with talk of everything and nothing, evenings in Moulinsart’s intimate drawing room, sipping hot lemon water and laughing as the Captain gossiped, with impressions and all, about the bourgeoisie he’d suddenly been thrust into. 

He felt like he been climbing a frozen waterfall, all the while thinking the Captain had him safely secured; when in truth the rope had snapped long before.

The sun was easing into the horizon now, and Tintin shivered under the thin, damp towel. “...Come along,” he said at last, a forced lightness in his voice. “Let’s find somewhere for dinner.”

*

Whatever hurts they’d caused each other that afternoon - and Tintin was still not entirely sure where his wound lived - seemed plastered over, at least temporarily, over food. Hearty stew was a cure for a great many ills, and even Tintin indulged in a crisp pint of beer, both of them laughing as the foamy head clung to his lip like an old man’s moustache. The inn, like the last, was welcoming and cosy in that special way of towns not yet overrun by tourists, and they sat almost elbow to elbow in a shady corner, warm from the food and the drink and their proximity. 

Already they would fly back tomorrow. A change of pace and scenery, that’s all it had ever intended to be.

Tintin spent the winding walk back to their hotel bemoaning the state of his damned article. 

“It’s a puff piece,” the Captain snorted, packing his pipe surprisingly deftly. “There’s your problem. You only want to write about near death experiences and uncovering ancient hoards.”

“You must admit it’s more enjoyable that way.”

“Ha! Enjoyable for your readers, I’m sure,” he huffed. “Not for old muggins here, dragged along for the ride.”

“Do I drag you? Truly?”

The Captain rolled his eyes, just a little, and smiled around his pipe. “Who else would keep an eye on you, lad?”

As if he’d tempted fate, Tintin immediately stumbled on the cobblestones, and without a word the Captain put his elbow out for ballast. Tintin caught it, forced to spend a dozy second regaining his balance. 

“I must tell you I find the after effects of all this drinking quite disagreeable,” he grumbled, and was pleased at the deep belly laugh this coaxed out of the Captain. Tintin had no intention on falling face first into the stone floor on their way home, and kept ahold of the Captain’s arm the whole way back. 

Sturdy and reliable, as he always was, when it was asked of him. When Tintin asked it of him.

*

The walk, and the fraught sense of unhappiness just lingering on the cusp of his emotions, exhausted Tintin in his drink-weakened state. He flopped immediately onto the bed as soon as they walked inside, the cool, smooth sheets a blessing against his overwarm cheek. Milou, who had been asleep on the chaise, lifted a drowsy eyelid to inspect the scene, then closed it again, leaving them to it. 

Tintin might have fallen asleep right there. “Captain?” he mumbled, muffled by the duvet. He could hear the Captain padding softly between the rooms, packing the bags up, and felt childish and indulgent. But he did not want to get up.

“You just kip there, lad.”

“No—”

“I’m taking the damn sofa, let’s not have this argument again.”

“No!” Tintin called, embarrassed by his own petulance and too tipsy to do anything about it. He rolled over to face the ceiling, wiggling his ankles. “Help me off with my shoes and then come to bed. There’s no use in only one of us getting any sleep.”

He heard the Captain’s great sigh like a deep, distant foghorn. He deserved the chastisement, and was shame-faced enough that he forced himself to sit up, an apology already cupped in his mouth, but—

Without a word, the Captain crouched down where his feet dangled over the edge of the mattress. Quite ably, a man sober and hale, he untied Tintin’s shoelaces, pulled off his oxfords, rolled his socks down from knee to ankle, then those off too. Tintin, on the whole, loathed anyone doing something for him that he could do himself, but in that moment, he found he wanted to be tended to. His breath was shallow and his face felt hot. His thighs, too, were hot - from his swim, he decided, much delayed.

“Better, m’lord?” the Captain said, ribbing him gently, and pushed his fingertips against Tintin’s chest to knock him back against the bed. 

“Thank you,” Tintin mumbled, too earnest a reply for such a jest.

The Captain said nothing. Nothing that he could hear, anyway.

This was absolute extravagant laziness. Taking a deep, sobering breath, Tintin rolled off the bed to clean his teeth, wash under his arms and the back of his neck, dress in his pyjamas. The bathroom mirror told him exactly what sort of state he was in - bright cheeks, mussed hair, all his freckles piqued in the patches of skin that hadn’t quite burned - and he frowned at himself, all the more determined to get straight back to work as soon as they touched back down in Brussels. 

He scooped up a good few handfuls of water, swallowed half and splashed his face with the rest. 

The Captain was waiting outside to use the bathroom. As they passed, quite without thinking it through, Tintin reached out and grabbed his wrist, stopping him in his tracks. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say, but it felt the moment to say _ something_. 

“I’m sorry for being an ass,” he admitted.

“Tch, you’ve seen me far drunk far more times than this, boy. No apologies needed.”

“No, I mean— earlier. I was an ass about— well. You deserve to be happy.” Tintin smiled, and he hated that he had to force it. “I should love to see you happy with a wife.”

“Silliness,” the Captain mumbled, looking at the tiled floor. “All conjecture and nonsense. I shouldn’t have raised it at all.”

“We can’t both be in the wrong.”

“We damn well can,” the Captain said. “Now get yourself to bed.”

“You’ll come?” It was shockingly small and plaintive. There was some drink in him still.

“...Aye, give me a moment for my ablutions. I’ll come.”

Tintin felt tired. Not just in his body but in the cavity of his ribcage, an emotional fatigue he wasn’t used to and didn’t feel comfortable with. He wanted sleep to cleanse him of it, and hoped to wake in the morning clear-headed, without that low, persistent nausea that had bugged him half the day through. Dreamless sleep would do him the world of good.

He must have fallen asleep before the Captain even finished in the bathroom. 

*

It was dark again, when he woke. Not just the hazy dark of the room - not truly black, for a little light always tricked through the voile curtain across the balcony doors - but a close, encompassing darkness he couldn’t place. At first Tintin was unsure if he had opened his eyes at all, but then he blinked, and felt the brush of fabric against his eyelashes. The duvet, he thought, struggling for clarity. But whatever pressed against him was not still, not unmoving: instead it rose and fell like a breathing chest.

That’s exactly what it was.

He had woken with his face pressed against the Captain’s chest. The Captain’s arm was comfortably heavy across his shoulder, his beard a pleasant tickle against Tintin’s forehead. Tintin’s own hand rested on his waist, where the Captain’s shirt had shucked up in his sleep. Tintin’s palm on his bare skin, feeling the soft prickle of hair there. Their legs were gently entangled, like a dance. 

“Oh,” Tintin said very quietly. He didn’t mean to say it out loud. But he couldn’t help it.

It was as though all the disparate leads of a case had suddenly pulled together. As though he had been staring at a sculpture at entirely the wrong angle: a simple step to the side revealing it not to be abstract at all, but a deeply familiar silhouette. The burbling in his stomach was not sickness, and never had been.

It was butterflies.

—Had he ever been this much a fool before?

If he moved, the Captain would wake. Surely he couldn’t stay like this. Not all night. There was no harm in it, but—

Well, and he was comfortable, but—

He felt the Captain stir against him. Not one of Tintin’s reflexes told him to back away. He liked the burring noises the Captain made as he struggled awake. Felt them rumble in his chest. Then his hands clenched, and he let out a sharp inhale that Tintin felt against his cheek.

“Tintin—”

It was imperative he replied at once, calmly and reassuring. “It’s quite alright.”

Slightly, the Captain began to pull back.

“No, it’s— it’s really alright. I’m comfortable.”

“Tintin, lad—”

He pressed his face even closer to the Captain’s chest, meeting him every inch he tried to ease away. “Let’s just go back to sleep, Captain.” It sounded like a plea.

“I—” He had almost quit his breathing in the struggle to find his words. “I fear I’ll make a terrible fool of myself if we stay like this, Tintin.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t make me say it plainer than that,” the Captain begged. Tintin let his right hand curl into the fabric of his shirt, not wanting to lose him here, not yet. “I never want there to be any regrets between us, my boy.”

“There aren’t,” Tintin whispered, frowning. “There won’t be.” He still hadn’t moved his left palm from that bare strip of skin on Haddock’s hip.

“There will if you don’t let me be,” the Captain said, very very carefully.

Tintin could feel the bracing tension in the Captain’s whole body. His fear almost to breathe deeply in case it brought them into closer contact. His fear to untangle himself because of— what? Why? If Tintin described to him right now that roiling sea flooding the pit of his belly, would the Captain understand? 

Tintin had a reputation for being straightforward. For saying things as he saw them, his judgement of the world being, on the whole, a fairly measured one. He never saw any point in tip-toeing about when a blunt word could save a dreadful amount of fussing and fluster. Tintin knew some people saw this as rudeness, as a sign he did not know his place in society, that he was simply an upstart young man with delusions of grandeur. But still, that was his nature, for better or worse. He could not bear a lie, even one by omission. 

“If you kissed me,” he said, quietly, plainly, carefully, “I don’t believe that would be something for us to regret.”

The silence was hurtful.

Tintin did move, then, just a little. He wanted to see the Captain’s face, and shuffled back to drink in his expression without letting go of him. The Captain looked stricken. A man who has seen his ship, his crew, his cargo all lost at sea: a man who cannot fathom the circumstances that led to such a disaster.

It all flared up that tired hurt in Tintin’s chest once more. “Isn’t that what you mean?” he asked, needing to know.

The Captain’s eyes drifted down, away from his gaze. “You’ve gutted me,” he murmured.

“I don’t ever mean to,” Tintin replied, just as softly. And then, in the way his words sometimes ran away with him, that all-encompassing need for earnest interaction in every facet of his life pulling out sentences he didn’t even know he had in him, he said, “Shall I kiss you, now?”

The Captain’s eyes closed, pained. “Lad, I beg you—”

“Answer me honestly, please.”

“—I can’t.”

“Then I’ll decide for us both,” Tintin said, and nudged forward, and put his mouth against his Captain’s.

It made sense in a way that he couldn’t even be taken aback by. As natural and unremarkable as a key fitting a lock, turning smoothly. Their breath was sleep-warm and muggy, their lips dry from the sunshine days. His beard was soft. That didn’t surprise Tintin; he knew it from whenever they had embraced before. He let his hand drift up under the Captain’s shirt, to feel the skin-cushioned divots of his spine, the space between his shoulder blades. They had never untangled their legs this whole time, and he pressed closer with his left thigh.

The Captain’s shaky hand slipped across his neck. It lingered on the journey, and then softly cupped his jaw. Tintin leaned into it. It was so comfortable, lying with him there, tasting his breath. Learning his mouth. 

Their foreheads touched after. He wanted to kiss again at once. It seemed like the most natural state of being he could imagine. He did, in fact, canted up and took two, three, four more kisses as if they were owed him. 

“Stop—”

“Why?” Tintin asked, still against his mouth.

The Captain’s low laugh was a relief. He almost nuzzled against Tintin’s temple, or perhaps he was just shaking his head. “I never meant for you to know.”

“I didn’t,” Tintin admitted. “I didn’t until I did.”

“You make no sense sometimes.”

It had felt too long since he’d last put his lips to the Captain’s, so he simply kissed him again, murmuring all the while, “I don’t know how else to put it.”

“You must tell me to forget all this in the morning.”

Tintin jerked back then, peeved. The Captain was a sight under him, every part of his face red with emotion, a bead of sweat at his hairline, his lips thick from overuse. Tintin’s stomach turned fully over underneath his skin. He wasn’t alarmed at the feeling at all. Not now. “Why on earth would I do that?” he demanded.

“We can’t sustain this, lad. I’m old enough to be your father. We can’t do this.”

Tintin frowned. His mind was in two places. On the one hand, the pieces were slotting together and the full picture annoyed him. On the other, he couldn’t stop thinking how flimsy the buttons on the Captain’s pyjama shirt looked. How easily they would flick open. 

Logic won out. “Is this— is _ this _ why you think you’re obliged to marry?”

Haddock huffed, a sudden sulk. “_Well_—”

“Then I forbid it,” Tintin told him, taking them both by surprise. He claimed a stake immediately, putting his mouth on the Captain’s, and then, daringly, pressing those same lips to his neck. The rasp of his beard against Tintin’s cheek was electric. “I don’t want you kissing _ Delilah Herringbone,_” he mumbled, into that close, warm space between the Captain’s jaw and his collarbone, “when you should be kissing _ me._”

“Too bold,” the Captain breathed out, clutching him.

“It isn’t too bold, it’s just the fact of it.”

“You— you’re stubborn as a tigerfish that refuses to be caught, you know that?”

Finally, Tintin gave him space. He sat up, and took the Captain’s hand in his own, and played his fingers over the back of it gently, quite at odds with his pointed words. “You want to spend time with me. You’ve asked me several times to move in with you to Moulinsart. You want to kiss me. All of that’s true, so what have I said that’s too bold?”

Haddock opened his mouth, clearly found nothing to say, and closed it again. 

“Don’t sulk,” Tintin said, terribly fondly. He leaned down to kiss him again. The Captain jolted against him, a full body shock of tension that ebbed away almost at once, and his wide arms coddled Tintin back into the fold of his chest, his warmth, his body.

They kissed. Oh, they kissed. 

“...What time is it?” Tintin said, after a minute or so. His lips were damp now, and he licked them to check. They didn’t quite taste of himself, in a way he enjoyed very much.

“Blistering—” The Captain fumbled back for his watch. “It’s— 4am, not quite.”

“Oh. Well, we can’t very well carry on kissing until morning. We should sleep.”

“That’s it?! Easy as that, eh?”

“Yes,” Tintin said, practical, “because I want to kiss you when I am properly awake, first thing in the morning, and I can’t very well do that if I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep.”

“You sure you don’t want me to sleep on the sofa?”

“The world was ending five minutes ago and now he’s making jokes.”

“There’s no pleasing you,” the Captain huffed. It was not true in the slightest. Tintin felt stupidly pleased. Or perhaps both stupid and pleased, for he had been blind, and the Captain had been dishonest, and they were both fools. 

He could be annoyed about it later. He did not much care to be annoyed right now. All was well. 

All was well, and Tintin thought sleepily that come morning, that he should tip that concierge quite handsomely.


End file.
